Expressing Similarity – The semantics of linguistic expressions of similarity

This project investigates linguistic expressions of similarity. The paradigm lexical item in German expressing similarity is the demonstrative so. It can be used deictically as well as anaphorically, and in addition plays a central role in German equative constructions – scalar as well as non-scalar ones. Until now, no satisfactory semantic analysis has been suggested for the demonstrative so accounting for its deictic and anaphoric uses and, at the same time, for its role in equative comparison.

In Cognitive Science similarity is a fundamental concept in explaining human perception and classification. It will be shown in the project that similarity is fundamental in the semantics of natural language, too. Combining standard truth-conditional semantics with techniques from Artificial Intelli­gence, an interpretation of the demonstrative so will be given, based on similarity as a basic semantic relation.

Starting from the demonstrative so the analysis will be extended to other expressions of similarity (e.g. ähnlich 'similar', genauso / gleich 'same'), making use of a range of similarity measures. Cross-linguistic differences between German, English, Spanish and Dutch will be investigated looking for language-specific strategies in expressing similarity.